More Articles

The Dispatch E-Edition

All current subscribers have full access to Digital D, which includes the E-Edition and
unlimited premium content on Dispatch.com, BuckeyeXtra.com, BlueJacketsXtra.com and
DispatchPolitics.com.
Subscribe
today!

Inside a gutted big-box store, a technician is converting vehicles to run on a fuel — natural
gas — that costs about half as much as gasoline.

This is CNG Trans of the Far East Side, one of the companies behind a growing push to make
natural gas a viable option as a motor fuel. These efforts are closely tied to Ohio’s burgeoning
shale-gas industry, which could provide decades of homegrown energy.

“We are at the beginning,” said Rick Ridenour, who has worked for decades on natural-gas
vehicles and is now CNG Trans’ sole full-time employee. “Everyone who converts is loving this
stuff.”

What they love is the price. The public pays about $2 for natural gas that provides the
equivalent energy of a gallon of gasoline. And for anybody except the most avid gearhead, the
performance of a natural-gas vehicle is indistinguishable from that of a gasoline-powered
vehicle.

The early adopters are local governments, corporate fleets and just a few consumers. Columbus
and Dublin have begun converting their city-owned vehicles, and Gov. John Kasich has proposed doing
the same thing with some of the state fleet.

“One of the advantages, particularly for folks like you in Ohio, is there is a lot of natural
gas,” said Dave Hurst, senior analyst at Pike Research, a technology market-research firm.

Nationwide, there are 111,800 natural-gas vehicles on the road, including cars and light trucks
along with commercial and industrial vehicles, according to Pike Research. That represents far less
than 1 percent of all vehicles.

That total is more than double the number of plug-in electric vehicles, but much less than the
number that can run on biofuels such as E-85 or biodiesel. Each of the alternatives to gasoline is
battling for customers and for government aid.

Sixteen countries have more natural-gas vehicles than the United States, according to NGV
America, an advocacy group. Iran, Pakistan and Argentina are the leaders, each with more than 2 m
illion of the vehicles.

Getting control

In Dublin, IGS Energy is working with the city government to install a fueling station that is
scheduled to open this month. Central Ohio now has six such fueling stations, in addition to an
unknown number in the garages of homes and businesses.

“Right now, we’re going for the low-hanging fruit,” said Matt White, a regulatory attorney for
IGS. By that, he means that IGS is focusing on potential customers whose driving patterns mean they
stand to save the most money from the conversion. The ideal customer is a business or public agency
that drives a lot of miles and returns each day to a central point, he said.

Some examples include buses, garbage trucks and mail-delivery vehicles.

The switch involves an upfront cost of about $10,000 per vehicle. If a business wants its own
fueling station, that can cost a million dollars or more. Each year, savings on fuel will help pay
off the initial investment. Some businesses can start realizing savings in as little as two
years.

IGS, whose main business is selling natural gas, sees these vehicles as a way to expand demand
for its product. The company offers to supply its customers with gas at a fixed price for several
years at a time, offering predictability that clients cannot get with gasoline.

David Peabody, president of Peabody Landscaping on the Northwest Side, will have about
two-thirds of his 38 vehicles running on natural gas by the end of summer. He is installing a
fueling station at his offices and converting the vehicles. The project has its roots in the 2008
surge in gasoline prices.

“One thing that really bothered me is that I had no control over one of my largest costs, which
was fuel,” he said.

He sought out information about alternative fuels and met Ridenour, who was then an instructor
at the Hocking College campus in Logan. Once Peabody decided to go with natural gas, he spent years
getting permits and shopping for equipment.

Soon, he will see the rewards of all that work. He estimates that it will take about 18 months
to recoup the cost of the project with fuel savings, an unusually quick payoff because he is doing
much of the work in-house. After that, the savings will allow him to be more competitive in a
business where profit margins are often tight.

Just imagine

CNG Trans was started last year by Steve Lindsay, general manager of Lindsay Honda on the Far
East Side. The company installed a compressed-natural-gas fueling station at a former Meijer fuel
location off Brice Road south of I-70, where it also converts gasoline vehicles to run on natural
gas.

Near the station, the company has rented the former Meijer store. What used to be 200,000 square
feet of retail space is now an empty shell, with work space to do vehicle conversions.

For that task, Lindsay hired Ridenour, who has worked on natural-gas vehicles for as long as the
32-year-old Lindsay has been alive.

The wiry Ridenour is part mechanic and part scientist, with a permanent tan and a youthful
enthusiasm for what he does.

On a recent morning, he was working on a Cadillac Escalade. Like many such conversions, the
vehicle will be “bi-fuel,” meaning it will still have its gasoline tank, in addition to the
natural-gas tank, and it can be switched back and forth between the fuels.

“Just imagine the money we could keep in our country if we could get off (foreign) oil,” he
said.

He did his first vehicle conversion in the 1970s, which enabled him to run his own truck on the
gas that came from a well on his farm. He and his father later started a business doing
conversions. The venture lasted from 1981 to 1996, ending at a time when unusually low gasoline
prices led interest in natural-gas cars to dwindle.

The entrepreneur

Lindsay’s Honda store sells the Civic Natural Gas, the only consumer vehicle built to run on the
fuel. He also drives one.

“It just makes so much sense,” he said.

He thinks the environmental benefits are nearly as important as the financial ones. To make his
point, he bends down behind one of the vehicles and takes a deep breath near the tail pipe. The
vehicle has some harmful emissions but not nearly as much as the exhaust from gasoline.

On a recent weekday, he took his Civic for a drive to show off its handling. The car sells for
about $26,000, which is about $10,000 more than a base model.

Lindsay stopped at the CNG Trans fueling station, located around the corner from his dealership.
The single natural-gas pump is in front of a boarded-up convenience store.

Customers pay an automated card reader and hook the gas nozzle to a connector on the car’s fuel
tank, similar to the connection between a propane tank and a grill. The price is $1.89 for the
equivalent of one gallon of gasoline.

A nearby set of compressors makes the fuel ultra-dense, which allows the cars to travel a
greater distance than would be possible with the thinner gas used for cooking and heating. This is
compressed natural gas, or CNG.

Lindsay has invested several million dollars in CNG Trans. On most days, the station gets about
two customers.

This is the “chicken and egg” problem that faces any alternative fuel. Customers will not buy
the vehicles if there is no refueling infrastructure, but there is little incentive to invest in
the infrastructure if there are few vehicles. To make the fuel work, entrepreneurs need to step
forward, and that is what he has done.

“For me, it’s a challenge,” he said. “How can we integrate this great Ohio fuel into our
transportation?”